Reflecting on My Design Journey

Graduated from college in 2005, and I’ve been working for almost 14 years now. I’ve spent nearly 12 of those years in design. Recently, I’ve shifted from professional design to design management. In 2018, I transitioned to business and product roles (barely scraping the passing line).

I’m a bit confused about design now. Maybe I’m just at the age where one starts to feel that way.

I need some time to think, chat with some mentors and friends. One day, a few questions popped into my mind: Why did I choose design in the first place? What moments ignited my passion and sense of accomplishment in my design career?

I’m trying to look back.

Why Did I Choose Design?

Started learning art in middle school. In high school, from my middle school art teacher’s husband, Mr. Chen Jingyu, I first heard the term “graphic design.” But during high school, I knew nothing about the design profession. Choosing graphic design in college was basically stumbling in the dark.

At university, I did my best to learn traditional design foundation courses like “three major compositions.” But what really drew me in was web design. Two people opened the door for me: the first was my high school dorm-mate, Chen Xinrong, who somehow used a tool called FrontPage to create his own personal homepage that we could visit online (later he used Dreamweaver); the other person was my younger brother. At the time, he was in vocational school also learning web design. Back then, I simply thought web design was interesting.

Soon, I got absorbed in designing personal homepages. Before sophomore year, I was addicted to video games. Instead of returning home for the sophomore summer, I locked myself in the dorm and taught myself Dreamweaver and Flash via CDs (I had learned Photoshop before sophomore year). That was the start of my over-decade-long journey into “designing & creating personal homepages” for fun, something I still enjoy today.

In the second semester of my junior year, I was already doing freelance web design for outside companies, and I had a steady design gig at the university news website. Making money from something I was passionate about felt pretty great.

To sum up, my initial foray into design was completely guided by interest and serendipity.

Then, from 2005 to 2009, I spent 4 years doing web design. It was right at the early rise of mobile internet, and in 2009, I transitioned to designing apps. Choosing this path was partly due to my interests and partly the result of a simple guess about future trends.

For the past 10 years since 2009, I have primarily focused on app design.

Passion & Moments of Accomplishment in Design

• In college, I experimented with various versions of personal homepages (a part of internet design culture back then), purely driven by interest (before graduation, Peng Dongsheng from 51.com invited me to join).
• Through on-campus and off-campus web design gigs, I basically sustained myself financially, which gave me a sense of accomplishment.
• Between 2010-2011, I participated as an early designer in the Alibaba Cloud Phone 1.0 project (interaction & visual). It was a very open design environment.
• From 2011 to 2013, the design standards for iOS apps in the industry rose, and styles became more diverse. I was enthusiastic about experiencing new apps and spent a lot of time studying and mimicking new interaction forms.
• Around September 2012, dissatisfied with the Sina Weibo experience, I designed a Chrome extension called “Weibo Simplified.” It quickly gained over 100,000 users. It was a tool designed solely from personal interest and preference but received favorable user feedback, which was extremely satisfying.
• By the end of 2012, I met Wang Yi and experienced the earliest prototype of Liulishuo. I was captivated by its core interactions (red/green scoring, human-machine dialogue). Once again, purely from interest, based on my own habits and aesthetics, I redesigned the Liulishuo app. Later, while it gained 1 million, then 10 million users and the company went public, what I enjoyed most was the design of the first version (though it was overly simplified and not user-friendly for the masses).
• In later years at Liulishuo, I gradually moved from product-related design to team design and process design, evolving from solo work to high-quality team output. Memorable projects include the first official version of English Liulishuo, and the IELTS Liulishuo mock test experience.
• Some impromptu projects at Liulishuo, like the “The World is Big” peripheral product series, the first Hackweek, and three brand design proposals were thoroughly enjoyable.
• Around 2014, I started a tiny “Guang Yan Life” T-shirt brand, throwing some money at an interest-driven venture but had fun. Also, doing small designs in the limited spare time for friends was enjoyable: brochures for EIS School Nanjing, the MGC brand, L&W wedding invitation cards.

That’s my reflection for now.

Next, I’ll write three more similar pieces: reflections and reviews on design management, product design, and church preaching.